Sunday 30 June 2013

Search Tools

This week in class we were taught about the tools we can use to seek out information.
The main search tools are the INTERNET, Databases and Library catalogs.

Library Catalog is a file cabinet containing individual cards with bibliographic information about specific items in the Library. There is OPAC, an online catalog through which we can search for the items required. It provides details about the book, audio-visuals and other materials found in the Library. The use of OPAC is very effective making all our tasks very easy and less time consuming.

The INTERNET is also a very effective source of information in fact it is the widest source of information available in this world. Therefore it is also called the information superhighway This week's class taught us to use it effectively, introducing us to the weakness and strengths of the internet. It is designed to search for information on the world wide web. The tools we use in internet are search engines, meta-search engines, information gateways, subject directories and specialized database. Information are searched through a limited number of websites. It cannot directly access other computers.
Search engines are designed to use world wide web to search for information. For e.g. http://www.google.com/ , etc.
 Meta-search engines is multiple-data source. It searches from multiple search engines in one single search page. For e.g. metacrawler(http://www.metacrawler.com)
Information gateways provides a central access point to internet for many internet sites that cover popular news and information resources. It includes internet catalogs, subject directories, virtual libraries and gateways. It specializes in resources on a particular field. Example: ELDIS: The gateway to development information http://www.eldis.org/
Subject directories is a collection of links to a larger number of internet resources organized by topic area. Example: Infomine(http://infomine.ucr.edu/). There is also the specialized databases that are also known as the invisible web. It includes statistics, schedules, maps, figures. but now we can find it on most of search engines. It provides a reliable and up-to-date information. Some examples are the bibliographic database, google scholar, commercial database, etc.

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